


you must know life to see decay

by strangesmallbard



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, F/F, no curse reboot after Neverland, warning: a mention of sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-01-17
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangesmallbard/pseuds/strangesmallbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"She could laugh at the irony, she could, but all she knows is that death is even more a cage than life, and wasn’t death supposed to set you free?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	you must know life to see decay

**Author's Note:**

> From this prompt: “Character Pairing: Swan Queen. AU Setting: Regina is dead but watches Emma and tries to leave little messages to remind her of things like Henry’s allergy and that she loves them both. Emma is broken hearted but eventually she catches on. LOL make this an actual story forget the three lines. LOVE YOUUUU”
> 
> And then I got carried away. The title is from "After The Storm" by Mumford and Sons.

It’s the benadryl. 

The morning of the day she died–exactly two weeks ago, how wonderful–she’d set out benadryl on the kitchen counter to put in Henry’s backpack that night. His current set was about to expire.

It’s still there.

She doesn’t expect Henry to remember (don’t forget your epi-pen honey, don’t die, don’t die-), and she’s surprised to  _be_  surprised that Emma forgot. Emma’s not a neglectful mother. New at the job, learning, and perhaps as tired as she is or she supposes,  _was_ , but not neglectful. And also she didn’t take Regina’s son from her, her biggest fear never realized. Although she had, but she didn’t  _mean_  to. 

(Intention means  _everything_ ).

**

Henry is grieving and it hurts every time she sees that new darkness in his eyes begin to grow like the grey clouds before a storm. It hurts that she can’t reach out to him, tuck his chin underneath her head like he was small and could still fit. It hurts more than this particular new brand of loneliness: not being able to talk to someone, be heard, be  _seen_ , and this time literally. As if it’s not a giant metaphor for her whole life, shouting and shouting at an audience and them ignoring and ignoring.

Regina thought she knew all kinds of loneliness. She thought it was her oldest friend and worst enemy.

Emma….Emma. The word swirls around her in her mouth and she’s afraid of the breathy way it would come out if she let it. Like a goddamn prayer. Emma Swan, the savior. She wears a lot of black now. She doesn’t know if it’s deliberate. She’d go see for herself, but something about watching Emma sleeps seems so intrusive. She knows the vulnerability of sleep. (Waking up to Leopold’s drunk, heavy breath on her skin and then he’d-)

So much could have happened. And she’d allowed herself something so traitorous to her entire track record–hope. She allowed herself a tiny hope, one that she cupped in her hands and savored. That she could have a future with this little family unit they’d created. Daily meet-ups at Granny’s after school, after work. Emma’s smile, so brilliant and beautiful after a long, long day. The way their hands would brush up handing a dish over that night, that  _stupid_ way she’d blush like she’s still eighteen and-

She _should_  have known better. 

She sighs before she can cry again (the corners of her eyes prickle anyway) and no one hears and she lifts the benadryl packets up. She can do that. Lift things. Maybe one of these days she’d give Leroy and his pack of moronic Charming cheerleaders a good scare. Or Snow herself.

No, not Snow.

She’d resolved to not lift  _anything_ or move  _anything_ around Henry. (Or Emma, or Emma.) He’s a smart boy,  _too_  smart sometimes and he believes  _so_  much at the light at the end of the tunnel that she worries he’ll somehow figure out she’s still around. And try to get her back. It’d be just like keeping Daniel preserved for over thirty years, still pink in the cheeks from that cold, cold night in the stables and whispering he’ll come back, he’ll come back even as she exhausts every effort and rips her first heart out and wonders if he’d even love her anymore for who’s she’s becoming. She’d like to think, yes. 

Then he’d choked her. It wasn’t him, but she can imagine the words.  _What the hell happened to you that made you like this?_

No. Those weren’t his words.

And then he’d come back and he’d loved her but he still hadn’t known and he said  _Love Again_  like it was so, so easy and died. Dissolves into the atoms in the air. Not even a ghost left behind.

Hope can wind up hurting more than never tasting it at all. She  _won’t_ have that for her son. He needs to heal. Because the gaping wound from Daniel’s death never got sutured. It scarred, marred her forever. She wants her son to heal. She wants him to find a reason to smile again that doesn’t involve ripping out hearts.

Regina knows Emma has that darkness within her. She’d done  _everything_  she could while alive to make sure it didn’t consume her, especially in their magic lessons. There’s an open bottle of whiskey on the counter, the remnants of another lying in a broken glass heap. Emma is mourning her, mourning with anger and oh god it  _hurts._

She turns the benadryl around in her hands. Emma wouldn’t notice. Neither would Henry. And god forbid he has a reaction during class and the benadryl doesn’t  _work_ , and she couldn’t do  _anything_  but watch, because his epi-pen subscription is about to expire and she’d decided to the order in for the new one the day after she-

Would Emma know? She resolves herself that yes, Emma would. Emma’s a  _good_  mother. Her son’s–their son’s– _only_  mother now.

Still, Regina opens the zipper on her son’s backpack, takes out the expired packets and replaces them with the new, discards the old in the trashcan. 

Later that night she finds the subscription, and lays it on Emma’s bedside table as inconspicuous as she can.

(Intention means  _nothing._ )

**

She did follow Henry to school once. Before she learned how horrible of an idea that was.

She rolled her eyes with him (mentally of course, her son is polite) at all the fake condolences. No one was sad to see her die. Perhaps not too many were  _happy_ , but no. Only those that were important to her mourned her, and that’s what matters. She expected less than that in that dark creeping side of her mind that said she didn’t deserve anything, not ever. She saw a particularly enlightening drawing of her burning at the stake on some child’s notebook, though, when she sat in the back of a classroom.

Children can be cruel.  _(Regina’s mother is a witch! Regina’s mother is a witch! Regina’s just a baby! Let’s burn her pigtails!)_

Not all of them. Not her little boy. (And not that little girl Regina condemned because of her father, the hat-making  _bastard_ ). Henry goes through the day as best he can, smiles when it’s expected of him. He doesn’t speak up in class and his teacher noticing. He doodles in his notebook, writes something, but she can’t tell what it is.

She can’t get too close.

During lunch she goes to see Mary Margaret. She's erasing the chalkboard. When Regina edges her way through the door, it creaks, and she looks up and not at Regina. She looks like she’s expecting someone, and her brow creases and her lips set in a tight line and she smiles to herself like she’s trying to cheer herself up.

Mary Margaret was probably at her funeral.  _(Snow, you can always rely on me, dear.)_

She leaves and sees her son and follows him to the bathroom when she sees tears prickling his eyes, and hear’s a bang.  _Bang bang bang_. His wail echoes through the bathroom and  _bang bang bang_. Tears leak out of the corners of her eyes and she shouts “Henry!  _Sweetheart_ , it’s okay, I’m here, I’m here! I’ll always be here!”

She shouts with her barely used voice until it’s hoarse. _  
_

He leaves the stall a few minutes later, eyes red-rimmed and sniffling and washes his face with water. He stares at his reflection and his eyes _seem_  to catch hers and she thinks, maybe, maybe-

He walks passed her without a glance and she’s reminded of that year he’d do just that every single time.

She glances at the mirror.

Nothing.

**

She finds out why she’s a ghost ten days later. Those days were filled with crying and haunting and an occasional practical joke because at least it made someone miserable besides her, but didn’t ruin their life like a world-swallowing curse did. Also it made her laugh.

A laugh swallowed by the wind.

Apparently, according to the scroll with the curse written in that ancient, powerful language, whoever casts the curse is bound to it forever. Meaning, if they die, they never can leave. Their soul is forever between this world and the afterlife, whatever that afterlife is, and they can only touch what belongs to the curse. They can’t be heard, no, that’s too  _alive_ , their voice is already in the afterlife, but they can touch. They can touch soulless things like benadryl.

Things with a soul she’d pass through like her voice does.

She throws the book against the wall and screams and it makes a thump and she’s satisfied with the  _noise_.

Not condemned to die, but condemned to  _live._  No, condemned to  _consciousness_. 

**

Emma.

She watches Emma in the Sheriff’s station. Two donuts eaten. Four pieces of paperwork done and to be filed later. Eyes rubbed by weary hands, and how her jaw seems locked and tight. Her eyes are red. Her cheeks are red. Her hair looks thrown into a bun, not brushed.

_(Oh Emma, not for me, not for me-)_

Full time parenting Henry is taking it’s toll on her, that’s obvious in the way she smiles around him and pretends it’s okay and did she have that tiny hope too? Did she cup in her hands and hold it close? So close that she never spoke a word for fear it would be gone?

After she rubs her eyes and pieces of hair fall out of her bun and Regina suppresses the urge to reach for them, tuck them behind her ear. She does it herself and sighs, and her fingertips brush over a tiny slip of paper next to her paperwork. Regina can’t fight the curiosity and walks over, hearing her own heals clack against the linoleum but knowing no one else does, and as she sees the note, her heart maybe stops.

_Emma,_

_Would you like to have dinner with Henry and I tonight? We’re making spaghetti and meatballs. I’ve heard it’s your favorite. No, it’s not bribery, and I asked your mother. Fine, Henry asked your mother. I can hear you laughing, Ms. Swan. Remember what I’m capable of._

_-Regina._

She remembers wanting to add  _Fondly_  and struggled with it, the pen hovering over the letters for a minute before she just added a non-personal dash.

She’s glad she hadn’t.

She wishes she had.

Emma cups her hand over her mouth and muffles a sob and gets up before it can fully manifest. She twists side to side, and tries to calm herself. Regina reaches for her back, and her fingers pass through. She says what she told Henry. “I’m here, I’m here.”

And then: “Don’t cry, Ms. Swan. I’m simply not worth it. You wouldn’t want me around full time anyway. I’d always insult you.”

(I mean  _yeah,_ Regina, we insult each other, but it’s kind of our thing, you know? Like how my parents say ‘I’ll always find you!” but less vomit inducing-cutsie.)

And then her voice breaks, raises an octive, constricts the words she feels so  _so_  much in her chest, and she breathes them out: 

"I love you."

She’s glad Emma can’t hear.

She wishes Emma could just  _hear_.

She knows now, she understand what’s feeling, and she’s so, so afraid, but she though there would be more  _time_ -

Regina leaves seconds later, her heels once more clacking against the linoleum.

Clack, clack, clack.

**

Regina gets the idea from the note.

Because she  _has_  to make them understand. She can’t leave them hanging like this. By a thread.

They’re her  _family_.

The word rings through her head.

**

She leaves Henry the note first. It’s in his old winter jacket, the one she knows he hates but has to wear when it gets too cold. She slips the note in to his side-pocket on a particular crisp winter day, and knows he won’t question it. He hasn’t worn this coat since last year.

She sits on his bed as he rifles through his closet, and finds it with a deep frown that makes her chuckle. She was going to surprise him with a new one for Christmas. It was going to be blue.

Was. She’s gotten more used to the word. She’s not here, but she’s still here, but it’s  _was_.

He shakes out the coat, and the note falls slightly out of the pocket. He furrows his brow and takes it out.

_Henry-_

_Eat all your celery today, mister! It’s Friday, so come to Granny’s after school, and we’ll have a hot chocolate._

_Love, Mom._

Something she would have written a year ago when everything went wrong and Henry pulled away. She’d left him several messages in his lunch like that. Inviting him to Granny’s, and usually he wouldn’t show up. She’d find them in his coat-pocket later.

She’ll never blame him for any of it.

He takes the note and sits on the bed beside her, and he’s tearing up, he’s tearing up, this was an  _awful_  plan, of course this wasn’t at all for him, but for  _her_ , and now her baby’s sad all over again, and it’s  _her_ fault,  _her fault_. She just wanted him to know, she just needed him to be reminded.

He’s smiling. Tears are leaking out, but he’s  _smiling_ and she’s smiling and he looks up at the ceiling like she’s there instead of right next to him, a hand hovering by his shoulder.

"Love you too, Mom."

"Always." She whispers.

**

Emma’s trickier, she realizes. 

She wasn’t in the habit of  _leaving_  messages for Emma. Except for the occasional sticky note on the refrigerator once Emma moved in (because it just made  _sense_  considering they were co-parenting), or notes at the police station like the one Emma was reading that night.

Neither were optimal for suddenly _new_  notes to show up out of nowhere.

She has to be tactful.

She notices that in Emma’s groceries, she forgot the milk. So she writes a quick note -  _Remember the milk!_  - and leaves it in the silverware drawer, folded next to the knives. Emma finds it two days later, and laughs. A raspy laugh, like she’s choking. She re-folds the note and clutches it tightly in her hand and looks up at the ceiling like Henry did.

"Thanks, Regina."

**

They think she’s gone to heaven, she realizes a week later and starts from a sleepless night in the guest room.

**

Heaven or hell, they don’t exist, so what’s the use in over-thinking it?

Hell is this. Hell is  _here._

**

(It’s colder than she expected and she shivers in her sweater, sinks her chin beneath her silky scarf. She walks briskly, after-all she’ll be late for that town hall meeting if she goes any slower. Damn her car not starting that morning.

When she slips, she gasps and maybe the condensation freezes too, or maybe that’s the air knocked from her lungs and frozen too. She lands with a  _smack_ on the back of her head, her neck, and there’s blinding light, piercing her eyes-

And then she wakes up in her bed. Except not really, because she yells and yells and Emma and Henry don’t hear.

They talk about her funeral at the kitchen table, and don’t hear her strangled cry in response.

The Evil Queen, who’d survived a sword thrown at her chest, falling off a balcony, countless arrows, finally beaten by an icy road and the fact that no one noticed her blue, unconscious body until it was far too late.

She could laugh at the irony, she could, but all she knows is that death is even more a cage than life, and wasn’t death supposed to set you free?)

**

Things are better for Emma and Henry and that’s what matters.

She keeps leaving the little notes–they seem to be helping–because Henry smiles genuinely at Emma one night at dinner, and Emma starts humming Led Zepplin again while she does the dishes. (Regina had always told her to knock it off, but Emma would just hum  _louder,_ and she would have twist her lips to prevent a small smile from forming.)

It doesn’t matter that she still yearns so hard to be just  _seen._ That she cries and no one hears. That she’s stuck.  _Trapped, caged, a queen rattling the balcony until it falls._ No Tinkerbell to wave her wand this time.

Then, when she’s following Henry on his way to bed, she accidentally hits her waist against the doorknob, and the door itself, and hisses at the pain, and door creaks a little as it opens further. She stops it with a hand.

Henry hears. Damnit, damnit, damnit, Henry don’t, don’t-

"Mom?" He asks so very tentatively.

_Damnit._

**

She’s more careful, much more careful in the days following, but the seed has been planted in his head and he’s trying to get a rise out of her. He’ll say  _Mom_ at times that could startle her, wave his arms out like he’ll feel anything, but she steps back just in case, and then she realizes she can’t be around him anymore. Until he doesn’t believe it anymore.

But then.

But then she’d be taking away his  _hope_.

Another trap.

**

What can she do? What can she  _do?_

Stay around him, and he’ll grow false hope.

Leave, and he’ll lose  _all._

She can’t do it. She can’t.

**

Maybe having a ghost for a mother wouldn’t be so horrible, she thinks. Maybe it wouldn’t break his heart. Maybe it would fix things.

Maybe writing  _I’m here_ will fix it.

And maybe it won’t.

**

While she’s at war with herself, Henry delivers his findings to Emma. He’s created events in his mind that aren’t there–a book falling, which wasn’t her, the door creaking open, when that was just the wind–which would be horrible if he wasn’t so very correct.

"Ma, she’s here! She’s still  _here_ , and she’s trying to tell us!” He hasn’t touched food yet, still vibrating with the news.

Emma sighs and wipes her mouth before gently taking his hand. Her eyes are shining again, but she’s smiling as well as she can.

"Henry, she’s gone. She’s really, really gone. I’m sorry kid, I’ll always be sorry, but there’s nothing-"

"It’s her, Emma, it’s  _her!_  Please believe me, please! Remember the last time you didn’t believe me? I-“

(Oh Henry, no, no, don’t do this, don’t remind her. My little boy, I almost killed you-)

"I  _died!_ ”

There’s silence and it’s like Emma’s in a trance. Her eyes are focussed on the water glass, and her fork is in her hand, and her face is blank like a slate, but Regina knows a storm is brewing in her head, in her limbs.

She reaches out.

"Go to your room." Emma says quietly.

"But  _Ma-_ ”

"Now." She says a little louder, lifting her head, and there’s that darkness swirling and swirling and Regina reaches again.

Henry isn’t scared of her.

(Of either of them.)

He goes over to her, and kisses her on the forehead, and she inhales and exhales.

**

When they’ve gone to sleep, she visits her apple tree. It hasn’t been tended in a while, weeds are growing, some of the apples are rotting. She had been the only one who took care of it, and now it’s dying too.

She leans her head against the trunk, and for some reason, breaks down harder than she has in a while.

Her sobs, once again, are swallowed by the wind.

**

Henry manages to convince Emma to go see Mr. Gold, and as always she’s somewhat proud and somewhat annoyed of his powers of perseverance and persuasion.

Emma looks uncomfortable, shifting from side to side, and sticking her hands in the pockets of that red leather jacket.

Mr. Gold smiles his usual tight smile. “Ms. Swan, Henry. What can I do for the both of you?”

Emma gestures to their son, and he beams again. 

"My mom’s still alive!" Emma looks off to the side, and Mr. Gold raises a brow.

"My boy, I know it’s been a rather  _hard_  time for all of us-“

"Oh go to hell,  _Gold_ , you  _ruined_  her life!”

Henry and Gold both blink at Emma’s outburst, and Gold settles into a familiar smirk, and Regina can’t believe that Emma just defended her like that. Except she can.

"I may have." He said, and swallows. "But don’t ever think I’m not mourning, dearies. Regina was…." He stares and stares, but not at anything. Like Emma with the glass of water, and then he snaps back, as smarmy and enigmatic as ever. "Regina was special." 

The  _to me_  perhaps was unspoken, and perhaps not.

Emma breathes deeply, but doesn’t say anything else. A look from Henry reminds her that no, that’s not what they’re there for.

"I think my mom’s…..ghost, spirit or something? Is still here. I keep hearing weird noises around the house, and Ma keeps finding notes in places she swears she never saw before-"

Regina inhales.  _No, no, no, no_.

Emma cuts in. “Kid, those were old notes that I  _missed.”_

Henry glares. “You wouldn’t have missed notes from mom.”

Silence. Regina exhales.

Gold looks between both of them, and then limps into the back of his shop, and returns with a heavy tome of sorts. He slams it on the front desk, and opens the dusty pages, Henry coughing with the smell, and Emma wrinkling her nose and covering a sneeze.

He scans the page. “I wrote it into the curse. That whoever casts it, their soul will never move on. After-all the curse is shaped by it’s caster. If the caster were to truly  _leave_ , then the curse would go with her. A fail-safe, if you will. I didn’t think it would actually….keep someone in a half-living, spirit-like state, but merely keep just their  _essence_  alive in the air." He closes the book with another thud.

"If what you’re saying is truly, Henry, then yes. It’s possible I was wrong, and instead Regina is something like a ghost.”

A pin could drop. Regina holds her breath. They’ll know, and even after months of wishing someone would hear her, the prospect of being noticed again is terrifying. And Henry wouldn’t move on, Emma wouldn’t move on, the notes idea was a horrible one-

"Could she be brought back?" Henry near whispers.

"Hmm?" Gold asks, and Emma starts to speak, but stops herself.

"Be really alive again?"

"Henry!" Emma says, and there’s tears leaking out whether she wants them to or not. "It’s not….She’s not  _really-“_

 _"Could it?"_ He asks, his voice raising.

"Resurgence is impossible." Gold says, and Henry’s shoulders droop and his face falls and no, he did not just hurt her son like that, so  _brusquely_. “Because a soul has moved on. If it’s true that it hasn’t, then I could heal her body, and….potentially, yes. She could.”

Regina recoils in shock. She feels her heart beat harder and harder. All this time. All this time, and there could have been a way, a way for no one to suffer like this, a way that one tiny  _blip_  in their possible future could be rectified, and she breathes and she breathes.

Emma reaches forward and places both hands splayed on the front desk. 

"You better be telling the truth,  _Gold_ , or I swear I’ll-“

"Ms. Swan." He says gently, more-so than she could remember him being. "He’s my grandson. I don’t think I’d lie to my mourning grandson."

And Emma seems to remember something, and she lets him go, still shaking, and Henry takes her hand.

Gold claps his hand. “Now for the test, to see if it’s true. Regina? If you’re there, hanging on like the leech to this universe, would you kindly make your presence known, dearie?”

She rolls his eyes even as every part of her vibrates with excitement, with joy, with  _dread_ _,_ with  _life_. Breath.  _Breath._

If she does this, there’s no turning back. Emma and Henry could be broken-hearted all over again, and she  _can’t_  have that. But it was her own mistake in the first place. She should have left the house as soon as she realized. She shouldn’t have let herself be around them, because this was bound to happen. She wouldn’t have been able to stay away from those she loved, she wouldn’t and she  _didn’t_ , and now they’re paying the price.

She imagines their eyes turned to her for the first time in months.

She imagines cuddling into Emma’s side while they watch a movie. Maybe, perhaps,  _a kiss_. Multiple kisses. Holding Henry tightly before he runs to the school bus.

She cups that tiny hope again in her hands, a hummingbird with a full heart beat.

And she pushes a teacup over. Not his precious one, but she knows it will get his attention. He smiles in her direction and, their eyes follow, and she finds herself smiling back.

"Sorry I’m late."

No one else would find it funny of course, but she laughs just the same.

And light streams into her, pushes out the cold that stayed.

**

There’s more blinding light.

She holds her hand up and winces.

She sees two figures above her, two smudges against the light before they come into focus and– _oh._  She lets out a gasp, and it fills her lungs. Her skin is tingling and she feels stiff and sore and  _tired_  and it’s been so long since she’s felt physically tired at all, and she coughs. 

They’re beaming, their smiles wide, and they’re both crying, tears falling down their cheeks, their eyes shining, and she smiles back, her lips crack. Henry lets out a sob and buries his face in her neck, and Emma is just staring at her, smiling and then staring in shock and she moves a tentative hand through Regina’s hair, strokes her cold cheek with the back of her hand, and then holds her arm, strokes it as well.

"Hey." She says, her voice rasping and so very hoarse.

"Hey." Emma breathes. Regina lifts a hand to her cheek, and Emma kisses it without thinking about it.

"You’re back." Emma says.

Regina strokes her son’s hair. Feels it so acutely, his warm breath on her neck as he cries, every touch of Emma’s hand to her cheeks, she feels. How beautiful it is to  _feel_. To be heard. To be seen. She soaks it all in, and for once, for this one moment as she truly  _breathes_ , feels beauty around her instead of ugliness.

She wasn’t ready to die, not even in the slightest. The interesting part of it all. Perhaps before Henry, if she had died, she would have cursed every moment her soul was trapped in this forsaken town. But now, now she wants to _live_. In her own limbs, in her son’s smile, in Emma’s arms, in looking in mirror and seeing that her reflection doesn’t make her want to break it. She wants to live to see herself be proud of herself. She wants to see herself _believe_  in herself, not expect the worst, of life,  _of_  herself, always, always, always.

A long way to go, she knows still, but she’s going to _live_  it. She will, she will, she will.


End file.
